Flashfics
by lellabeth
Summary: My entries for various flashfic competitions, 100-300 words each. Not a continuous story. All Twilight, some M rated.
1. Chapter 1

**Fanficflashfic week 8**

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My hands shake as I take a drag from the cigarette I shouldn't be smoking, grey mist floating from the amber glow end. The silk of my dress had felt feminine, just how you like me to look – but now it chafes my skin like burlap, the coarse threads rubbing until I peel. I feel exposed even in the black of night, as though everyone can see the mascara running in rivulets over my cheeks and pooling around my too-soft jaw.

I'm the scorned-woman stereotype, red eyes and a broken heart, but I won't stay this way for long. Our life together is over, and I almost smile as I think of not having to live up to your impossible standards any longer. I kick off the heels I've never liked and untwist my hair from the style I've forgotten the name of. I wipe the dark tracts from my face as best I can and take one last pull of my smoke before I flick it away. I stand, slide off the wedding ring that means nothing now and let my upset blacken into anger.

God is merciful to those who repent, but I sure as hell won't be.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

My dreams are filled with bomb blasts and the cries of wounded men.

My skin is scarred and puckered from the war, and yet the real ugliness lies deep within me - a secret root of darkness that lays dormant until triggered, and then it ricochets inside my chest cavity until I am it and it is me. The shrapnel of war has splintered, a thousand shards embedded across my body.

I meet you on V-E Day. I don't celebrate like the others - there is no singing or cheering within my heart, just a silent prayer of thanks that the death will be done with. I stand in the crowded city square of a foreign country with hundreds in the same khaki uniform as me, but I am more alone than ever.

And then I see you, smiling and laughing and beautiful, and the warmth of it chases the chill of solitude from my skin. I approach under the guise of entering the cafe, though the moment our eyes meet I know I'm exactly where I should be. You don't hesitate when I pull you from your chair and into my arms.

Your lips taste like redemption.


	3. Chapter 3

Our love is effervescent.

It bubbles and boils inside my stomach,

And when our lips meet,

It sets off a chemical reaction,

Your adoration purely exothermic when it's released.

And when your finger twines around mine,

The smallest brush of skin,

Like an artist's tools kissing a canvas,

Your body heat paints me with colour.

I was scared of you, of this and of us,

So frightened of living I forgot how it felt to be alive,

So terrified of failing that I was too scared to try.

I floated through life, drifting and dreamy,

Hoping that one day I would find an anchor,

To give me ties to bind me to the earth,

To stop me spiraling out of reach.

But then there was you,

Your orbit and mine colliding until we were the moon and the stars,

And all the gaps in between,

Now, my gravitational pull belongs to the Earth no more.

As your palm slides into mine,

Soft skin meeting guitar-callused fingertips,

The abrasion is enough to remind me that I'm here,

In a physical world, still inside my body.

That seems hard to believe these days,

Because to be with you is to see heaven.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	4. Chapter 4

"Prop your leg up on the desk, that's it. You want to tease me? Two can play at that game, sweetheart, and you'll lose."

His fingers trace over where I'm wettest, dipping inside before brushing featherlight up towards my hips. I writhe and pant but he just chuckles, the sound raspy as it echoes around the office.

"I should punish you for this, you know, for making me need you so badly. I've been hard all fucking day. I've bee-"

He's cut off by the shrill ring of his phone, and his fingers leave me completely to dig it from his pocket.

"Hi, darling! The meeting's run over, I'll be late."

I turn my head to the side, unable to bear the smile on his face that makes me feel more vulnerable than being spread eagle on his desk ever has. I've never had to hear this part – how I'm killing his marriage. I pull my skirt down and grab my bag, bile burning bitter at the back of my throat. He doesn't stop me, doesn't even flinch, and as I lay alone in my empty bed that night I can't help thinking that he's punished me after all.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	5. Chapter 5

Philanderer, womaniser, heartless bastard. I'd been called them all; let them sink into my skin until they were another layer there. I anticipated the admiring looks from women, the flirtation and the teasing touches before I took them home.

And you were no different, another beautiful woman with a tight body and soft whispers in the muted morning light. I expected the flat stomach, the hard nipples and blonde hair. I knew the slick of your spine would be tangy against my tongue, could guess that you'd want the curtains open while we fucked just from the way your teeth sank into my lip, banked on you arching your back and pressing back against me.

I didn't foresee how you'd look back at me as I slammed my hips against yours, didn't suspect the whisper of 'gentle' when I slid my thumb to rub against your clit, didn't even contemplate how your eyes would widen when I rolled away from you after we'd both been sated.

But what I really didn't expect, what I couldn't even imagine, was how the wrinkled emptiness of my bed the following morning would match the gaping hollow sitting beneath my breastbone.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	6. Chapter 6

I fell for ugly words and scarred knuckles.

I fell for a man who loved me in ways that showed no love at all.

I fell, and there's no way to get back up.

I am tired of days spent hiding bruises or thinking of excuses.

I am every domestic violence warning personified, and I wonder how I got so lost.

No more. This is the day I reclaim ownership of myself.

~*~

I feel nothing but peace as my feet step from the dock.

There is a splash as I hit the water, then silence as it laps around my limbs.

For a split-second, I float.

Then the river's current kicks in and the weight of the rocks in my pocket drags me down into the waves.

Murky green-blue darkens into black the further downstream I travel. My lungs burn until I breathe, and then the deluge makes them ache.

Life has been hard, yet my death will come easily.

The water is cold but I can feel the warmth from the sun all around me.

I smile when I realise the last thing to hit my face will be the light and not your fist.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	7. Chapter 7

Your lips don't kiss. They bruise and punish, suck at my skin until I'm covered in lovebites so dark there's no love in them at all. Your hands are rough, your touch so careless that I wonder if you know what it means to be soft. You insist on being behind me when we have sex, and I tell myself it's the position you like rather than the anonymity. Your hips thrust so hard I know there will be bruises on the back of my thighs all week. I know that I'll feel you each time I sit - as if I don't think about you often enough anyway.

I lay face down in a comforter that smells like another woman as you fuck me, because that's the only word there is to describe the way you take pleasure from my body as though you're owed it. Your weight pushes mine down into the mattress, your rhythm never faltering even as we fall. I thought I was past falling for you.

There's a moment when your hands cover mine that I think, "This is it. This is when you start loving me back," except all you actually do is admonish me for wrinkling the sheets. And then I remember that you have no love left - that you save it all for your wife and leave me with nothing but hate.

Your cock fills me, but I can't remember a time I felt so empty.

You pull out roughly once you've come, disposing of the condom and shutting yourself in the bathroom. This has always been my cue to leave.

Except this time, I leave a note under your wife's pillow before I walk out of your house for the last time.

Revenge doesn't taste as sweet as I'd hoped.

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**Thank you for reading!**


	8. Chapter 8

The sign hangs outside a house that's empty of furniture but full of memories.

I drive past it every day on the commute to work from my new house - not because I have to but because I need to, because that ceramic and cement is our legacy. You don't rest there and yet I imagine you filling the cracks between the bricks like mortar, rather than under a grassy plot with a different stone guarding your final home.

The 'not haunted' banner above the sign is true. There is nothing of you in the house, even though I saw you everywhere anyway. Not the thin, bald-headed and sallow-skinned version that you became for the last few months of life, but the young woman and then the older one too - with a pregnancy bump or holding a child, you were the echo that followed me down the halls.

I moved the girls and I to a new house, a one without your reminders everywhere.

Except it's not the house you were haunting.

It's me.

You are the ghost of a forever love, and you'll haunt my heart for as long as I live.

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**Thank you for reading.**


	9. Chapter 9

Their cries are the only punctuation to the run-on sentences that cycle endlessly through my brain.

They all fight at first, weak limbs scratching and kicking, cursing like the strong men they believe themselves to be, but then they succumb. They see that I will not give an inch, that I am nothing more than a wall, and then they accept their fate.

My favorite thing is their eyes. Often they squint them closed after the first slash against their skin, but some keep them wide, focused on mine, searching for some heart within the monster. Except their eyes are a gift they don't realize they're giving, the sight of their irises shining like jewels against the murky-ink of their pupil burning fire through my veins.

Life doesn't fade - there is no spark that goes out. Instead there are heaving breaths, gurgly coughs and inhuman noises.

I am never more alive than in the moment they die.

I cannot kill the one who killed all that made me alive - there is no tactic to murder a ghost, no strategy to hunt smoke.

Instead I settle for men with hearts just as black as his.

And I wait.

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**A little dark, huh? Thanks for reading!**


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